Remembering the Old Songs:

THE COVENTRY CAROL

by Bob Waltz

Earlier this year, Lyle and I switched months in the Old Songs
cycle. He said it was because he was taking a vacation. I think the
real reason was to get out of having to do the Christmas column.

Christmas, and religion in general, just isn't a common theme in
traditional song. I won't bother proving the point; just take a look at
the lists of Child and Laws ballads, or most of the regional song
collections. They flatly don't have religious songs -- or if they do,
they're songs people learned in church; these aren't really
traditional. I have, in fact, used up every genuinely traditional
American Christmas song I know, other than pop Christmas carols. (Which
is rather ironic, since the pop Christmas carols are the only
traditional songs most people hear these days.)

So back we go into the archives of the old British songs.

The Coventry Carol is perhaps not actually traditional (and not by
origin a Christmas song). In fact, it came about as close to extinction
as it possibly could; the only surviving ancient copy was burned in a
library fire in 1875, and we are dependent upon two very bad
transcriptions from the early nineteenth century. We literally aren't
sure of either the words or the music; either may have been copied in
error. I'll give you the words as we have them first, and then a
modernized version.

This song was originally associated with the English Mystery Plays.
Every year at Corpus Christi (a spring religious festival), the guilds
of the various towns would put on a series of plays illustrating Bible
stories. In a time when the Catholic Church refused to sanction Bibles
in English, this was one of the few ways peasants could learn anything
about the Bible.

Most of the Mystery Cycles have vanished; they were suppressed
during the Reformation, and we have only a handful of manuscripts left.
It's likely enough that many of these plays contained music, but any
such music has been lost.

The state of the Coventry cycle is worse than usual. Only two of the
several dozen plays survived into modern times. But one of those two --
the pageant of the Shepherds and Tailors -- had two songs appended at
the end. They may not have been original, but they seem to have been in
place by 1591.

There is so much to say about this song! It fascinates me in many
ways. First, note the fact that it can end "terpsichore" -- i.e. on E
major rather than minor.

Then there is the history. The Massacre of the Innocents is
obviously Biblical (Matthew 2:16), but the history of Herod found in
Josephus implies that there is more to the story than we see in the
Bible. Herod was a brute (he murdered three of his own sons), and at
best marginally sane, but the Massacre doesn't sound like him. Maybe
I'll get to explain that some time; for now I'm out of space.